>> new congress, new leaders. watch it all on c-span. up next on surface up next, several sessions from the atlantic festival, beginning with michelin star and chef, discussing his work in puerto rico after hurricane katrina hit the island in 2017. >> you don't know how lucky you are. for so many reasons. do you know how lucky you are? i will tell you how lucky you are. >> with you on this stage. >> welcome and thank you for

the. you are lucky because something exciting will happen. our conversation, which no doubt will be exciting. let me alert you to the fact p.m.,xactly 2:18 president trump in the from of the federal government will be alert. an emergency there is no secret that you, chef, have had some tension with the president. i don't know if this is a message he is sending from the beyond in some way, some subliminal message. >> well, i don't want to sound pretentious but i made that happen. [ applause ]

>> i have been for more than one year trying to meet with feem at-- people at fema and i guess they don't understand my english and finally we are sending a message and we are here, to prove that finally they spoke to me. so this is a living proof for them that they are actually listening, i guess. [laughter] >> so anyway, this will happen, we will let it happen. and then we will continue. >> i want my extra minute. >> we will demand our extra minute that the federal government takes away from us. but in all seriousness, we are speaking at a profound time, the atlantic plans this every year and this year, it coincides with the anniversary, such a strange word, anniversary, but we mark one year since the hurricane ravaged many parts of the caribbean, but in particular, puerto rico. and you, chef, have been so instrumental, from the very early days, in building a grass roots movement, to feed people, just to get them food. [ applause ]

>> so i did kind of want to take a step back and ask you what it was like when you got on the plane, one of the very first planes, into san juan, after the storm, and what you saw when you got there. >> well, i was in earthquakes and hurricanes before, but it was like nothing i had ever seen. there was no electricity. no atms functioning. the supermarkets had long lines. people will be waiting forever because the markets were empty , and nobody was going to be bringing any food any time soon. so i realized very quickly that the problem was very big and that actually, what we know a little bit about chefs, i saw that there was no plan. and that's why we began cooking. we went from one kitchen, to almost 26, from 1,000 meals that first day, to almost 150,000 meals a day. we went from 20 friends that gathered together to feed the few, to more than 25,000 men an d women of puerto rico that made it happen. almost we served 4 million meals. and i am glad we did it.

we didn't plan. we didn't meet. we do what chefs know. we gather, we find a kitchen, we find the food, and we begin feeding anybody that is hungry. sometimes in emergencies, you have to stop planning, you have to start doing, because the emergency of now, when people are hungry and thirsty cannot wait. [applause] >> you worked in haiti after the earthquake there. you have been to many disaster zones. so you know that distribution, it is one thing if you get the people, and you are making the ham and cheese sandwiches and you have an assembly line going, how do you get that food to the people who are living in places where the roads have been totally wiped out? i mean, how did you do that? >> well, we did it with the help of many. the community came like in an amazing way to join us. everybody became like an uber driver for us. anybody that had four wheels and a willingness to make it happen, we will give them a sticker and they became our engines to deliver the food.

10 foodmore than trucks that delivered the food in the very poor neighborhoods, one hour distance from our main kitchen in san juan. the great thing with this, and you mentioned the solution, and the last month, refund gallons one million of water sitting in the airport, somewhere, in puerto rico. a million gallons. almost 20 million dollars worth of water. you can bring the assets, you can bring the food, whatever you bring to help people. if you don't have a good distribution system that is organized and systemic, you can claim, hey, we send them the food, but if the food is sitting somewhere in a place where nobody has access to, you are not helping. what we did is every piece of fruit, every bottle of water, every meal we made, we had a very good distribution system.

at one point, in one day, we were able to reach 900 points of the distribution around the island. that's what we really did. we didn't cook. what we did is make sure we brought the food to every corner the island where people, elderly especially, were hungry and waiting for a plate of food. >> what was your coordination -- [ applause ] >> i'm not feeling you, so don't clap. there is no food after my talk. thank you. [laughter] >> what was your relationship with the federal government? were they helping? were they hindering? >> the men and women of the federal government are the best people we can have. they work long hours. sometimes they don't look at the clock. they are 24/7, taking care. but they're great, it doesn't mean the system helps them be efficient. the system has to help. i am the best republican right now, why, because i want, in this moment, no red tape. mr. trump, i agree with you, i don't want any red tape, if the red tape makes american people go hungry and thirsty for long

periods of time. so now is the perfect moment to say fema, what do we have to do to reinvent a fema, where the word emergency means something. in terms of food and water, if you are not able to deliver immediately, when there is need, you are failing the american people. so we need to reinvest the rent -- reinvent the lessons we learn from hurricane maria, that some horror or applied in a north carolina, to make sure that katrina, that everybody said would never happen again, well, maria happened, and we were not ready. we need to learn to be ready. >> there was a long dispute over the death toll in this hurricane. i mean the government in puerto rico pegged it at 64, i think, was the number, 63, 64 and it stuck there since last december. >> 16 when president trump was first on the island. >> just in august, the government amended that numberer to close to 3,000 dead in the first six months after the hurricane. president trump just recently

said that despite that death toll, that the federal response to the hurricane in puerto rico was an unsung success. >> yes. >> if granted five minutes of the president's time, what would you like to convey to him about what happened? >> i need the minutes. in leadership 51% is empathy. , if you don't show empathy, you cannot be a leader. [applause] you can be right and you can be left. the number was sure, 3,000 dead, probably more, and they were not in the hands of president trump directly, we cannot do anything about the hurricane, but just the lack of response, the emergency of now, because people were lacking electricity, and they didn't have generators. people were dying because they

were on breathing machines. people were dying because they didn't have enough water to drink. i saw that firsthand. they were drinking from dirty streams of water. so sure, it is his responsibility to make sure the death toll would be as little as possible. if you follow indonesia, unfortunately, there has been another earthquake, we have a central kitchen, we have a team there, we are about to be's ending is a continuum, they almost update the death toll daily. if a country like indonesia updates the death toll daily, would you agree with me, democrats, or republicans, that we should be able to update in america today the death toll daily? by not doing that, we fail the people of puerto rico, bought it -- because it seems the problem was not as big as it was. by keeping the real number of way from everybody, i'm congress, from senators, from

congressman, from everybody, we somehow said, well, puerto rico is not such a big deal, when actually it was a big deal. we need to have the full force of the federal government, and by not recognizing the death toll, the death toll early, was -- that is where the federal aid was not as good, and as quick, and as fast as it was supposed to be. >> you have spent so much time outside of the united states and in places that have seen such devastation -- guatemala, you mentioned haiti, obviously , puerto rico. i wonder if you could talk about how that experience, looking at america, from the outside in, and as an immigrant yourself, naturalized i believe in 2013, you became an american citizen. >> yes. >> what has that experience of looking at this country from the outside taught you about what it means to be an american in 2018, and our current political moment? >> i think america, we think it is the most giving country in the history of mankind. one of the reasons i'm so proud to become american --

hey -- >> don't take that personally. >> i want my extra two minutes, please. the president is interrupting my talk. [laughter] shoe fetish this is a test of the national wireless emergency alert system. no action is needed. ok, people, come back to us. come back to us. there was not an alert. >> there we go. [laughter] shoe fetish you know what, as an immigrant i say that immigrants like me, we build bridges, we make sure that people recognize that people that look different than us, different accent, different religion, skin color, hair color, the way we look, it seems sometimes the system makes us believe that we should be afraid of those. when actually it is on the contrary.

right now we know that people who are different, like you, you are enriching yourself. you know, one of the reasons i really love to go to places like haiti or guatemala, we were there after the volcano, and we did almost 400,000 meals, in this moment, seeing some people, they want to be building walls. such a brilliant idea to build a wall, right? you think if you build the wall, you are protecting your people from harm. every single civilization that kind of put themselves behind a castle or behind a wall, if you look, they disappear from the history of the earth, they are not here anymore. history proves that. walls don't protect civilization. from disappearing. what is the best walls america can be building? when we went to guatemala, we began feeding the people in need after the volcano, we were making sure that they will come back from the tragedy of the volcano, of the lives that were lost, of the homes that they lost, by feeding them, and helping them restart their lives, we were making sure that

they will be happy in the country they belong, in the communities they want to be. if we can provide them with anything, what are they going to do, what would you do, if your children have no food tomorrow? you will go to the end of earth to feed your children. if we build walls, we will not protect america from a future of chaos. if we invest in making sure the communities that run america do as well as we are trying to do for ourselves, that is the way we will have a safer america. [ applause ] >> the best wall, the best money america can do is investing in u.s. aid, making sure that every country around the road does better. that is the safety of america. -- every country in the world does better. that is the safety of america. it is a very simple solution. >> che